Promoting self-regulation in the classroom:effects of teacher, academic tasks and peers

The research on how pupils regulate their behaviors has come up in the educational fields and had an acknowledgement that pupils need to regulate behaviors and challenges in the classroom, which are conducive for them to become a self-regulated learner and get benefit through learning process. This study investigated the effects of three factors, the teacher, academic tasks, and peers, on pupils’ behaviors self-regulation in the classroom. The purpose was to find out the key elements which influenced pupils’ self-regulation, so that it was able to select and design effective methods and approaches to promote pupils’ self-regulation. There were two types of theories acting as the basis of this study. One was Zimmerman’s self-regulatory theory, and the other one was collaborative learning involved interdependency theory, Piagetian theory, and Vygotskian theory. Eleven Grade Four pupils and their English teacher in one classroom were involved in the study. Self-report was assigned to pupils before and after classroom observations. Observers recorded pupils’ behaviors and the teacher’s teaching activities which occurred in the classroom. The pupils were also asked to fill in the learning diary during implementing the academic tasks. The mixed methods were used in this study. Through these methods, several descriptive analyses were also carried out. The self-report was categorized into three aspects and the means of each item between pre- and post- self-report were used to compare pupils’ transformation of thoughts and viewpoints. The descriptive data from the classroom observation were used to evaluate the academic tasks and the teacher’s role in the implementation of those academic tasks. The learning diary was inclined to evaluate the teacher, academic tasks, and peers through the activities carried out in the classroom, and the data were interpreted with the means and the number of decreasing frequency of each item separately. The result of the study showed that peers had some positive effects on pupils’ self-regulation of behaviors. Pupils could interact with peers immediately and get support from peers when carrying out some types of tasks, which were helpful for them to raise self-efficacy beliefs, regulate behaviors, and complete the academic tasks better. However, the other two factors, the teacher and academic tasks, were not significant. Although the teacher provided clear explanation, modeled how to execute the activities, and gave interventions in the classroom, there was no significant effect was found that the teacher promoted pupils’ self-regulation of behaviors effectively in the classroom. In addition, there were various types of academic tasks designed and implemented in the classroom, and the technological tool (e.g. Ipad) was also applied in some of them. But some academic tasks did not stimulate pupils’ interests and even caused pupils’ attention distraction, which made them have poor implementation in the learning process at times so that they were difficult to regulate behaviors in the classroom. In this study, the validity and reliability were strived through data collection, data analysis, and interpretation. However, there were also some limitations. The number of pupils participating in the sample size was discrete, so the generalizability of the result was limited inevitably. Furthermore, the translation of relevant data could have a little deviation and therefore influenced reliability and validity more or less. One important implication in this study is that self-regulation studies should focus on how to teach self-regulation knowledge and skills in authentic teaching environment. After explanation and instruction of self-regulation knowledge and skills, the teacher need construct proper learning context for pupils to practice and experience. These opportunities are beneficial for pupils’ internalization of self-regulatory process. Therefore, linking knowledge and strategies training to the regular teaching process is conducive for pupils to transform the knowledge and skills to their daily learning. For the future research, the appropriate pedagogical approaches are demanded to design which will be used in teaching pupils’ self-regulation knowledge and skills in the classroom